Brian Cohen

A year ago, Sunil Mahajan, CEO of Kleeto, approached a few seed funds and venture capitalists to raise working capital for the record management solutions company. Forget funding, many of them did not even give Mahajan a patient hearing.

Kleeto faced an unusual problem — its capital requirement was very small. That made it a pariah for the investors it contacted. The investors were besotted with ecommerce startups, which required bigger capital and ergo, represented bigger ambitions and bigger markets, although they carried bigger risks. "VC funds had no appetite to invest in B-to-B profile like ours," says Mahajan.

Ready to start expanding, the creators of smartphone app ASAPP! have launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs to raise £110,000.ASAPP 4ASAPP! is a free app that is available to iOS and Android devices that allows businesses to target the right people in your neighborhood or town. It uses the phone’s inbuilt GPS technology to determine the user’s location to create a virtual perimeter (or Geo Fence). These fences have a diameter of 5 meters to 5 kilometers and can be drawn from around a corner shop, a football stadium or a city center.

Indian E-Commerce Giant Flipkart Raises Massive $1B Round

Flipkart, the largest e-commerce company in India, announced on Twitter that it has raised a massive $1 billion round. The round was led by Tiger Global Management and Naspers, with participation by GIC and existing investors Accel Partners, DST Global, ICONIQ Capital, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and Sofina. The tweet confirms reports several days earlier in the Economic Times that company had secured that amount in funding at a reported $7 billion valuation.

In a statement, Flipkart said the “funds will be used to make long-term strategic investments in India, especially in mobile technology.”

This takes the total Flipkart has raised so far to $1.75 billion. The company, which now has 22 million registered users and makes 5 million shipments a month, last announced fundraising in May, when the company said that it had closed a $210 million round led by DST Global, with participation from Tiger Global, Naspers, and Iconiq Capital.

Flipkart will most likely use the money to ward off competition from Snapdeal and Amazon, which launched in India a year ago. It will also continue acquiring startups–it’s most recent purchase was online fashion dealer Myntra in a deal reportedly worth $300 million.

3D printing has changed the way engineers test products, allowing them to cut down on time and costs. But what about 3D printing the components that go into most of these products?

Botfactory computer engineer Carlos Ospina said that most of the people he encountered didn’t believe it was possible. But he’s proven them wrong with Squink, a portable circuit board factory that allows you to test your project in minutes in the comfort of your home — costing around $2 to print.